Overcoming Textbook Fatigue

Introduction

Textbooks as we know them have been around since the end of the 18th century, but if you compare Thomas Dilworth's The Schoolmaster's Assistant, Being a Compendium of Arithmetic both Practical and Theoretical, first published in 1773, to a contemporary algebra textbook, you will find few similarities (Dilworth, 1798). Back then, the content was delivered in a question and answer style, mostly for the purpose of memorization. Today, textbooks practically dance on the desk. Despite the evolution, the 21st century brings challenges that publishers could never have imagined twenty years ago, beginning with a ubiquitous source of information online accompanied by a generation of students more comfortable with tapping keys than turning pages. Textbooks are still a mainstay in most classrooms throughout the world, either in print or online, but smart teachers are learning how to use them as one of many resources for a burgeoning curriculum rather than as the single, authoritative source of information to be taught to students.

Contributors to Textbook Fatigue

As a consultant, I have the great fortune of spending a lot of time with teachers (and students) in various situations. It is through my experiences during these collaborations that I coined the term "textbook fatigue." Textbook fatigue is more than a "tired of textbooks" malaise. It is a weariness with the entire business of using textbooks and programs as curriculum guides, a hopelessness brought on by robotically following both the sequence outlined by textbook publishers and the activities they provide. It is a term that targets scripted programs and step-by-step teachers' manuals that dismiss individualization of schools, teachers, and students. I hope that this book will be an antidote to textbook fatigue and spark a renewed commitment to working within a community where staff and students embrace active, thoughtful, and relevant learning through a variety of resources and tools.

Fidelity to the Textbook

I began to think in terms of textbook fatigue when I was sitting at a tiny table in a tiny chair with 1st grade teachers who were also perched uncomfortably on chairs that looked as if they were straight from the doll house in the corner of the room. I will never understand how K–2 teachers manage to sit on chairs that are made for the bottoms of humans weighing less than forty pounds, but that's another issue entirely. On this day, we were talking about writing, and these teachers were telling me that they simply did not have time to incorporate writing into their curriculum. Being a former English teacher, this sounded like heresy to me, but I managed to remain relatively calm. "How can you not have your children write?" I asked.

"There just isn't enough time for everything in the textbook," explained the team leader, pointing in dismay to the large teacher's edition of their reading text.

"We're already going so fast that the kids aren't getting it," a first-year teacher said, nearly in tears. "I can't fit in one more thing."

"Then why don't you slow down," I asked, "and include what you know is important, like writing?" They looked at me as only primary teachers can look at someone who has had way more experience with adolescents than with children who do most of their writing with a crayon.

"We have to follow the program with fidelity," the team leader explained patiently.

Ah … fidelity. I was reminded of when a well-respected literacy expert called "fidelity" the new F-word. Thankfully, the principal walked into the room. We had a great conversation about fidelity, about having teachers use their own knowledge to make wise curricular choices, and about slowing down if the kids aren't getting it. These teachers are first-rate professionals who care very much for their students, but they and so many others have been convinced that following the prescribed program is somewhat akin to giving your child the entire course of antibiotics: missing one dose could sabotage the treatment.

Let me make clear that I understand the necessity of following a sequence for many topics, particularly those in science and math. Curriculum is all about organizing information so that it scaffolds deep learning. And one strength of most textbooks is that they are impeccably organized. The problem is that teachers are often left out of the curriculum loop and feel they must follow, often in a mechanical way, the teacher's edition as if it were handed down from on high. That's a real concern today, especially with the increasing emphasis on 21st century skills and Common Core State Standards. We need to have students analyze, synthesize, and use information rather than simply memorize it; skeptically evaluate sources instead of obediently accepting everything in print; and learn to work collaboratively to solve problems instead of only passing tests. Teachers (whole schools, actually) must be actively involved in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of all phases of the curriculum, not obedient followers of a packaged textbook series.

So, using textbooks as well as a wide variety of supplemental resources to support effective instruction is what modern schooling is all about. Driving instruction from the textbook's table of contents or trying to cover everything in the text is actually counterproductive in that it distracts us from our most important task: helping students to internalize, apply, and transfer new learning in ways that are fresh and meaningful.

Insufficient Background Knowledge and Volume of Information

We have all experienced textbook fatigue and we've seen students suffer from it as well. The symptoms are obvious: we hide out in the teachers' lounge during textbook adoption, our students moan audibly when we ask them to open their texts, and we all try to figure out ways of transporting textbooks without risking permanent back injury.

In truth, textbook fatigue of both online and print texts may occur most often for students because they have insufficient background knowledge or vocabulary to help them make necessary connections with the many topics presented, invoking the "this is boring" chorus teachers hear every day. Texts are also sometimes written in a "just the facts, ma'am" style that is not especially interesting to students or doesn't come at the material from their perspective. In addition, because of the sheer volume of information contained within the pages of the text as well as the overwhelming array of supplemental materials, students often don't have time to assimilate a concept before being rushed to the next.

A similar scenario plagues teachers. Teacher editions are bulging with the latest reading strategies, online resources, coaching tips, graphic organizers, vocabulary instruction—as well as pages (and screens) of color-coded benchmarks, standards, and curriculum alignment. This material might be helpful if teachers had a few extra years to read it; instead, every few years teachers face a new textbook adoption that is more complex, more all-encompassing, more daunting than the last.

One Size Fits All

One of the reasons that textbooks and their associated resources weigh so much is that they are created to meet the needs of as many states, districts, teachers, and students as possible, which makes it a one-size-fits-all product. Larger states such as Florida, Texas, and California get the most attention, not because those states have more worthy students and teachers, but because they have more students and therefore more money to spend on textbooks. And lest we forget, all textbook publishers are for-profit businesses, in fact, multibillion-dollar businesses. Publishers spend millions keeping up with standards as well as with trends in education and often change their content when the political or educational winds shift. They use focus groups to report back to their marketing departments in much the same way that cereal companies survey their target audience to find out how much fiber they should put in their flakes.

Certainly, the individuals working for publishers may care about students and teachers, but the bottom line is sales. And if an idea isn't profitable, however engaging or commonsensical it may be, you won't see it in programs, textbook series, or supplemental resources.

Similarly, if a controversial topic such as the advantages of stem cell research in science or sexual content in literature (even Shakespeare) is questioned publicly by large groups of people, it is often soft-pedaled or omitted entirely. And if you think textbooks aren't political, think again. A significant example was highlighted in the New York Times in March 2010. "After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light" (McKinley, 2010). At the same meeting, "Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state's large Hispanic population were consistently defeated" (McKinley, 2010).

The Washington Post covered the story as well, writing that "Historians on Tuesday criticized proposed revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum, saying that many of the changes are historically inaccurate and that they would affect textbooks and classrooms far beyond the state's borders." They explained that because the "Texas textbook market is so large, books assigned to the state's 4.7 million students often rocket to the top of the market, decreasing costs for other school districts and leading them to buy the same materials" (Birnbaum, 2010). This unfortunate occurrence supports the argument that textbooks should not be used as a single source of information, much less as a sole curriculum.

Perhaps more than anything else, textbooks are victims of the 21st century. With information doubling every two years, the vast textbook machine can't rumble along quickly enough. Editors begin working on print textbooks several years before publication; by the time the textbooks are published, much of the information may be stale if not completely wrong, especially in science. With so much information being generated by a global, digital world that never sleeps, editors must go crazy trying to determine what to include and what to discard.

That's not to say that there aren't some exemplary textbooks out there, but it's important to remember that textbooks were never intended to replace teachers' expertise, knowledge, or intuition in the classroom. Textbooks are simply a resource, a convenient way to allow students to have access to the same information at the same time, with suggestions from educational experts on how to use the information with students. Even as more schools are buying laptops or iPads and textbooks are moving into the online market, it's how we use these digital textbooks that will make the difference in students' learning. Using any online textbook as the only source of information ironically ignores the advantages inherent in electronic media, specifically the availability of high-quality (and often free) online articles, websites, and other open-source materials. What's more, text that is difficult to read doesn't become easier just because it is electronic.

How We Use Textbooks

In the United States, there is hardly a standard textbook use policy. When consulting in a large district in Kentucky, for example, the curriculum director told me that when administrators conduct walk-throughs, a teacher is "marked down" if she is using the textbook as a curriculum guide instead of as a resource. In another state, the district superintendent laughingly told me that she couldn't pry teachers' fingers from the textbooks—and then admitted that because of budget cutbacks they had few other additional resources. In several schools I've visited, teachers had only a few textbooks because they were expected to work together to create lessons from a variety of sources. In a small southern district, a gifted grant writer was able to procure iPads for each teacher; her next goal was to make them available to students so they could switch from print textbooks to an online version.

I've been in schools that have only classroom sets of textbooks and others with policies that require that each student be assigned a textbook. In one school, each teacher had a classroom set and each student had a stay-at-home textbook. Although the cost was exorbitant, administrators cut back in other areas because they felt print textbook access was a critical component of their literacy goals.

Textbook use is as varied as schools themselves, but what I am advocating is changing the way we use all textbooks, both print and online, by cultivating teachers' knowledge and experience rather than sublimating their abilities to textbooks and programs.

How to Revitalize Learning

One of the goals of this book, besides revitalizing learning for students as well as for teachers, is to show how communal learning can be commonplace throughout the school. Although it is possible for teachers to make the move from a textbook-centered curriculum to a resource-infused curriculum individually, it is much more difficult without the support of a group of colleagues to help fashion this change.

Linda Darling-Hammond, in her eye-opening book The Flat World and Education, examines why high-performing nations such as Finland, which she calls a "poster child for school improvement since it rapidly climbed to the top of the international rankings," are doing so much better than the United States on international tests (2010a, p. 164).

"In Finland, like other high performing nations, schools provide time for regular collaboration among teachers on issues of instruction." This collaboration is in the form of "powerful learning environments that continually improve as they learn to engage in a 'cycle of self-responsible planning, action and reflection/evaluation'" (2010a, pp. 172–173). She goes on to point out that this shift in teachers' learning has an effect on classroom practices. Teachers who engage in a cycle of planning, action, and reflection discover the challenges and rewards in what they expect their own students to do.

How much professional development in the United States is devoted to planning, action, and reflection/evaluation? As Yvette Jackson wrote in The Washington Post, "Much of the professional development teachers are required to attend is attached to textbook adoptions, mandates, or scripted programs that promise results that are rarely delivered" (2011). It seems that textbook fatigue is also plaguing professional development.

Communities of Reflection and Practice

The advantages of professional learning communities (PLCs) are well documented, but, unfortunately, many PLCs exist in name only, especially when schools do not commit the time necessary to make them successful. Often, PLCs are hurried affairs that focus on checklists and protocols, leaving members little energy for reflecting on student work and teaching practices. These groups have become, in too many schools, one more thing to add to teachers' (and administrators') long and burdensome days rather than a place where collaborative planning makes their work more interesting and productive. Sadly, the acronym PLC does not always invoke a positive response from teachers.

I like what the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) calls these PLCs: Communities of Practice. NCTE cites the following as characteristics of these communities:

One of the best ways to overcome textbook fatigue is by forming such communities, either by grade level, content area, or in interdisciplinary teams. Another option is to work with a co-teacher. If you want help with starting or continuing group learning, note the Community of Practice section at the end of Chapters 1 through 7. These sections are designed to help you capitalize on the informal and formal benefits of peer collaboration and explore concepts presented in the chapter. It is the wisdom of your own crowd, at your own school, that will transform what may have been a PLC in name only into a vibrant working community.

Daniel Pink says that "Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another" (2011, p. 73). He contends that when those conditions are met, there is really no limit to what can be accomplished. In this era of standardization and scripted curricula, we need to reembrace autonomy, self-efficacy, and relationships before we even touch the cover of our textbooks. Through interdependence, especially within our communities of learning, we can make wise decisions about how to use textbooks as resources to support instruction.

The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future pinpoints the challenge: "If America is to meet the needs of 21st century learners, we must move away from the norms that governed factory-era schools. … Transforming schools into 21st century learning communities means recognizing that teachers must become members of a growing network of shared expertise" (Fulton, Yoon, & Lee, 2005, p. 1). Teachers already have the shared expertise, or they can certainly grow it through study and collaboration, but they need time to examine appropriate text, plan lessons, and discuss how to engage students in learning if we want to see schools move solidly into the 21st century.

Resources for Revitalizing Learning

By relying on communities of learning, both in classrooms and within faculties, the chapters in this book will help teachers choose textbook activities wisely, assist students as they unlock difficult text, and find appropriate supplemental resources.

Chapters 1, 3, and 4 address how to help students engage in deep, meaningful reading of all texts;

Chapter 2 focuses on how to build background information;

Chapter 5 shows how to incorporate writing into content-area study;

Chapter 6 provides suggestions for using assessments that guide instruction;

Chapter 7 offers advice on building text sets for all subject areas; and

Chapter 8 gives a picture of schools that are already using textbooks as resources.

Overcoming Textbook Fatigue

This is a book about how to manage your textbook before it overtakes you, reclaim your curriculum from the table of contents, and embrace teaching as a joyful activity, not one driven by textbook demands. Those goals may sound nearly impossible, but I have seen entire schools delivered from textbook fatigue when given the support to work collaboratively on what their students need, not what textbook publishers decide their students need. This means reaching within and beyond the textbook to access all sorts of 21st century tools, the same ones that students will be using in college, their careers, and daily life. Just as we have moved on from the encyclopedia salesman who convinced us that no home was intellectually safe without a set of World Books, it is now obsolete to believe that there is one set of textbooks that can meet the needs of this generation of info-savvy kids.